WILSON v. INTHACHAK

Angela Wilson sued Dr. Nirandr Inthachak after her mother, Dorothy Warren, died following an allegedly botched CT scan reading in a hospital emergency room. A trial court granted the doctor summary judgment, ruling Wilson lacked the strong evidence needed under a Georgia law that raises the bar for emergency medical malpractice claims, and separately ruling she had not shown the outcome would have differed with a correct reading. On appeal, all 14 judges of the Court of Appeals of Georgia agreed the trial court was wrong on both points and that summary judgment could not stand. But they split 7-7 on the exact reason one of those points was wrong and on whether to formally vacate or reverse the order, so the case was sent to the Supreme Court of Georgia as an equally divided case. The Supreme Court of Georgia held that because all judges agreed the judgment itself had to be set aside, and disagreed only about the reasoning and what happens next on remand, there was no true equal division on the judgment. It returned the case to the Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court of Georgia's equal-division jurisdiction is triggered only when the Court of Appeals is evenly split on whether the trial court's judgment must be set aside, not merely on the reasoning for why it must be set aside or what should happen next on remand.

The ruling clarifies when the Supreme Court of Georgia must step in after the Court of Appeals splits evenly, limiting that jurisdiction to disagreements over the actual outcome of a judgment rather than the reasoning behind it, which shapes how future divided appellate cases get routed.

Case returned to the Court of Appeals

1. The court examined the Georgia Constitution's Equal Division clause, which requires the Court of Appeals to send a case to the Supreme Court of Georgia only when its judges are evenly split on the outcome of the judgment being appealed, not on every issue within the case.
2. Relying on its earlier decision in Rodriguez v. State, the court explained that a true equal division exists only when the full Court of Appeals has considered every possible error and is evenly split on whether the trial court's judgment must be set aside at all.
3. Applying that rule, the court found all 14 Court of Appeals judges agreed the trial court's grant of summary judgment to the doctor could not stand on either ground the trial court gave, so there was no disagreement about the judgment itself.
4. The court treated the 7-7 split between judges voting to 'vacate' versus 'reverse' the summary judgment order as not a real division, following Rodriguez's holding that vacatur and reversal count as the same side of a judgment for this purpose.
5. Because the judges' remaining disagreement concerned only why one ground for summary judgment was wrong and what jury instruction should follow on remand, not whether the judgment survived, the court concluded this dispute did not trigger its equal-division jurisdiction.

• equal division jurisdiction
• Court of Appeals of Georgia
• emergency medical care statute
• medical malpractice lawsuit
• appellate jurisdiction